Dear Authors,
Considering the comments of the reviewers and the online public discussion, your manuscript is returned toyou for a major revision and it will be sent again to the reviewers.

You are required to provide
1) a revised version of the manuscript, where all changes are marked
2) an accompanying letter, where you explain pointwise all changes that you have made to the text as response to the comments of the reviewers.

I anticipate that your replies to the comments of reviewer 1 are not convincing. The revised version of the introduction is not sufficient to responded to the reviewer’s request for improving it, I cannot find in the text that you have tentatively uploaded the improved explanation of the overall goals of your study and the main new scientific findings are not sufficiently clear. This negative comment applies also to the abstract, where you write that “The results of this study will be helpful for planning, designing, and management of hydraulic structures and water resources projects in the study area”, without providing in it clear information to support this claim.

I find the uploaded text AC4 where you reply to reviewer 2 hard to be read, as line breaks are not used to separate the different comments. Please, take care to avoid this problem when providing the accompanying letter mentioned above in point 2) .

In general, please make sure labels are readable when the figures are reduced to printed size. This is certainly the case for figure 1 included in AC4, that I do not understand whether you mean to insert in the main article or it is just provided as an answer to reviewer 2.
Further add to your paper a large scale map showing the area of study, whose location would, otherwise, be unclear to readers not familiar with the geography of IRAN.

Looking forward to your revised version.
Piero Lionello

Dear Authors,
The publication of your manuscript requires a further revision. I fully share the comments of reviewer 1. I recommend you consider them seriously and provide a revised version with the information and discussion that he recommends. Your manuscript will be returned to reviewer 1

Further there are some comments of mine that I ask you to consider when submitting the revised version.
Best regards,
Piero Lionello

Abstract:
1. The information on the frequency factor is not in my view so relevant to be put in the abstract (further you missed to add its units!). I suggest to delete it unless you have a strong argument to keep it (which is not clear in the abstract and should be added toit)
2. Considering uncertainty of computed values, is rather clumsy to add so many significant digits to your results in the abstract. Values to be reported are 448, 201 and 143 mm, with no further digits.
3. I would add a clear statement that the most reliable estimate for PMP is 143mm (if I get it right your conclusions!)

Introduction:
- Local context should be better explained in the introduction. What are the consequences of extreme precipitation in the region? For which specific applications in the considered region is the value of PMP needed?
- Minor point: Line 18, page 3 K_m is NOT number, it is a value

Conclusions
*Pleas, insert a discussion of the actual meaning of PMP. From your description, I understand that is it an upper limit that you expected NEVER to be exceeded. However, “NEVER” is quite problematic to be consistently maintained in reality if you wait sufficiently long (eventually millions of years)! A short paragraph relating PMP to the return time values of other approaches such as General Extreme Value theory could be useful. Example: if P_50 is the accumulated precipitation in 24 hours that is expected to be reached once every 50years, how are P_50m and PMP related?
My comment 2 of the abstract applies to the conclusions as well
* Please, relate the results to an estimate of the actual hazard and its consequences. What would be the local impact of a PMP with a value of 143mm? and if this value were wrong and the higher estimate correct (448mm), what would it be the consequences of this error? Finally, are local structure adequate if PMP is 143mm ? and if it is 448 mm?

Dear Author:
In my email explaining my previous decision, I asked you to consider the comments of reviewer 1 and to provide a revised version with the information and discussion that he/she recommended. I also anticipated that your manuscript was going to be returned to reviewer 1. However, in your "Author's Response", I find only your replies to my comments. Please, provide a version of the manuscript accounting also for the comments of reviewer 1 and your explicit and pointwise responses to them.

Further, I am not fully convinced by some replies of yours.
1) The statement “In the theory definition, the PMP refers to the upper bound with a zero probability of exceedance.” Is in my view misleading, in general, and should be deleted. If you have a Gaussian distribution, for whatever value of K_M there will be probability (vanishingly small as K_M increases) of exceeding the PMP computed using (1).The rest of the sentence is acceptable to me, but it should be slightly rephrased after the deletion.
2) I think that the information that PMP and P_50 are numerically similar is important and should be added to the manuscript.
3) If P_50 and PMP are numerically similar, what is the advantage of using PMP instead of computing P_50 using the Generalized Extreme Value theory? A short comment about this should be added.
4) You write that “Since the magnitude of point PMP at an individual station should normally not exceed three times the highest observed rainfall from a long period of rainfall data (Hershfield, 1962),…”.This statement sounds strange to me. The factor three would imply a huge overestimation, especially if the observation cover along (suppose 100-year long) period. The involved factor should have some dependence with the length of the period covered by the observation and should decrease for long periods. Please, clarify/correct
5) Instead of “the construction costs will be increased”, I would write “the construction costs will be unnecessarily high”. A clear conclusion of your work is that in this basin the standard Hershfield Method is not adequate (and you write this).I would also emphasize in the abstract and in the conclusions that it produces unrealistically large PMP values for construction costs.

A further comment: I do not see the relevance of the info provided by figure 2and I suggest to remove it and its reference in the text.

Best regards
Piero Lionello

Dear Dr . Bakhtiari:
the reviewer has no further comments on the revised version of your manuscript. I agree with him that your manuscript is publishable, subject to technical changes to improve its English form.

I thank you for having considered NHESS for the publications of your research.
Best regards,
Piero Lionello